


Blood Will Out

by N1ghtshade



Category: Prodigal Son (TV 2019)
Genre: Branding, Day 14, Gen, Gil is a sherrif, Is something burning, Western AU, Whumptober 2020, and Malcolm is a deputy, yes it's really late
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-20
Updated: 2020-11-20
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:29:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27643484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/N1ghtshade/pseuds/N1ghtshade
Summary: “You can try to deny it all you want, but there’s Whitly blood in you, boy.” The man chuckles through blackened, broken teeth. “Just like the old man. Blood will out, boy. Mark my words.”Malcolm starts to say something, but then there’s a sharp pain at the back of his head, and he curses himself for not noticing there was a third person coming up behind him as his world goes black.Western AU with Gil as a sheriff, and Malcolm, Dani, and JT as his deputies.
Relationships: Gil Arroyo & Malcolm Bright, Malcolm Bright & Ainsley Whitly, Malcolm Bright & Dani Powell, Malcolm Bright & JT Tarmel
Comments: 14
Kudos: 33





	Blood Will Out

**Author's Note:**

  * For [just_another_outcast](https://archiveofourown.org/users/just_another_outcast/gifts).



> This is a teaser for what will hopefully be a fully fleshed out AU someday! The characters fit so well into this universe I couldn't resist!
> 
> I've been DYING to post this since Whumptober but @just_another_outcast hopefully it's worth the wait! And HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

Malcolm shifts from foot to foot in the shadows behind the saloon, hoping Ainsley shows up soon. The air has a wintry bite now, and if Gil is right about the ache in his bones, then snow is coming before the night is over. 

And Malcolm does not want to be caught in a prairie blizzard. He’s heard Dani’s stories of her first year homesteading and how she tied a rope from the house to the barn so she wouldn’t wander off and die in the storms. And when he was a Marshal, the men had stories of the kind of deadly weather they’d encountered too. Maybe if he’d lasted longer in that job, he’d have seen the same things, but...he doesn’t want to think about that. He’s lucky Gil trusts him and would take him on as a deputy after he came home in disgrace. 

He shivers, wishing he’d worn a thicker coat, or that scarf Gil gave him. He doesn’t know why he left the scarf on the peg in his room before he came. 

Actually, he does. He just doesn’t want to admit it even to himself. Because he knows that if he’d brought it, been surrounded by the familiar smell of horse and leather and gunpowder and tobacco, he’d be hearing Gil’s voice telling him this is a bad idea. 

It is. He shouldn’t be keeping secrets from any of the others. He’s sworn to uphold the law as a deputy but he’s been lying to all of them. True, he’s doing it to protect Ainsley, but he’s afraid he’s only using that as an excuse. Because he’s really protecting himself. 

He tells himself this is the last time. Ainsley had mentioned the Whitly gang is getting ready to move a big gun shipment. He isn’t sure how she gained the trust of her informant, but maybe the newspaper pieces that paint the gang as sympathetic dime novel heroes has something to do with it. Ainsley has a flair for the melodrama of the story of the men who still hold loyalty to their leader who’s imprisoned at Fort Leavenworth. And who will stop at nothing to free him. 

Another good reason for Malcolm to keep his source of information secret. Gil rails on Ainsley’s articles, calling them trash and keeping them specifically to light the stove in the sheriff's office. Malcolm isn’t sure he’d believe that it’s all smoke and mirrors, that Ainsley is keeping on the good side of the gang so she can get enough information to stop them for good. 

He just has to keep this delicate balance a few more days. He can do that. And then Gil will have a reason to arrest the gang for something more than a little drunk belligerence and getting too rowdy in the saloon. 

“Well, well, well, what do we have here, boys?”

Malcolm spins around, startled. He didn’t even hear anyone coming. 

He recognizes the two men leaning on the fence. Deadwood Billy, who’s been part of the gang ever since Malcolm can remember, with his scarred cheek and the ever-present wad of tobacco puffing out his cheeks like a squirrel, and Marcus Heany. 

If Billy is a disreputable-looking scalawag, Heany is a skeevy-looking drifter. He’s new in town, but Malcolm can practically smell the creepy coming off him like the stench of whiskey. 

Did they find out he was meeting Ainsley here? Did someone find one of their coded messages? Is his sister in danger?

Malcolm focuses on those fears to push out the more insidious ones creeping into his brain. That Ainsley has been double crossing him all along. That she’s taken her father’s place as the head of the Whitly gang.

“What’s the matter, boy? Too afraid to go in and get a drink like a real man?” Billy spits on the ground. “Just gonna stand and look in like a schoolboy afraid his momma’s gonna catch him watching the painted ladies?” 

Malcolm lets out a faint breath of relief. This isn’t about Ainsley at all. Just his incredibly bad luck rearing its ugly head. 

“If your father were here, he’d have you inside with a whiskey and a girl or two,” Billy continues. “Can’t deny the old man knew how to live it up.”

Malcolm knows all the stories. He heard them from his mother when she got drunk one night. He’d never before or since heard his cultured, east-coast old money mother use those kind of words. And he’d never known until then that Ainsley is only his half-sister. 

He knows about one of his father’s crimes that will never find its way to the papers. How a dance hall girl came to the door late one night with a child in her arms and a demand that the then-respected Dr. Whitly pay her to keep her mouth closed about whose child it was. How his father only laughed and shot her. And would have killed the baby too if Jessica hadn’t begged for its life. For  _ Ainsley’s _ life. She’d pretended. And by the time Dr. Whitly became a monster in the public eye, Ainsley was so convinced of the lie that telling her the truth would have done more harm than good. 

It’s small wonder his fair, fierce sister is almost nothing like Malcolm or his mother. 

“Then it’s a good thing that bastard’s in prison, because that’s not the life I want,” Malcolm says, his hand moving toward his Colt holstered at his waist. He doesn’t want to start a fight here, not two against one, but he also doesn’t want to be caught unaware. 

“You can try to deny it all you want, but there’s Whitly blood in you, boy.” The man chuckles through blackened, broken teeth. “Just like the old man. Blood will out, boy. Mark my words.”

Malcolm starts to say something, but then there’s a sharp pain at the back of his head, and he curses himself for not noticing there was a third person coming up behind him as his world goes black.

* * *

Malcolm wakes to the harsh jolting of a badly built wagon rattling over the frozen roads. Bile comes up in his throat, but there’s nothing to throw up, he’s been too nervous to eat, picking at his meals with Jessica and even ignoring Gil’s repeated attempts to get him to at least force down some bread. 

His hands and feet are numb from cold, so it takes him a moment to realize that they’re also tightly bound with thick rope. He blinks sluggishly. It’s too dark to see much, and the cloud cover is making everything into nothing more than black shapes. A few snowflakes are drifting down, settling on his face. 

He doesn’t realize he’s drifted off again until there’s a sharp slap to his face and someone pulls him upright. He’s dragged off the wagon, and the rope around his legs is cut so he can shuffle through a growing layer of snow into the reddish glow of a campfire. The fire is surrounded by tattered tents and ragged men drinking out of brown glass bottles and smoking. The air is heavy with a dirty tobacco scent that turns Malcolm’s stomach. It’s nothing like the tobacco smell that clings to Gil’s clothes when he comes home from rituals with his Cherokee family. 

This must be the Whitly gang’s camp. Somehow Malcolm has a hard time reconciling memories of his cardigan-clad father, whose pipe was only ever stuffed with the most expensive tobacco money could buy, in these kind of surroundings. Maybe things have changed for them since their leader was captured.

He tries to ignore the whistles and whispers as he’s shoved into the glow of the firelight. Even though he only knows some of these men from the wanted posters in Gil’s office, it looks like they all know who he is. A man with a scar bisecting one cloudy eye laughs thickly, then coughs and spits on Malcolm’s boots. 

“Well, lookie here boys.” The high-pitched whining voice makes Malcolm shiver, like the sound of a bad piece of chalk on a classroom board. “The prodigal sonnie himself is returning to us. Here to take your daddy’s place, boy?”

It’s all mockery. They can see the star on his coat and the rope on his hands. But Malcolm still feels sick at the thought that any of them think any part of him could be like that monster. 

“Now, see, if anyone’s gonna be comin’ in here takin’ Martin’s place, it’ll be daddy’s little girl,” another man chuckles. “Think she’s got more balls than her brother here.”

Malcolm doesn’t want to let them drag Ainsley into anything, but he also knows if he says anything, they’ll know how much he cares about her. And be even more likely to use her against him. 

“What kind of Whitly are you, boy? Running around with a tin star on your jacket, playing hero? That’s not what you are. And you can only pretend for so long.” Billy grabs the badge and pulls it off Malcolm’s coat; he hears a snap of metal and the ripping sound of the wool tearing around it. The badge is tossed into the fire and the edges glow against the burning wood.

And then Malcolm sees the other piece of glowing metal in the fire. 

A branding iron, in the shape of a W. 

Either the men tracked him down with the express purpose of doing this tonight, or someone rode ahead to tell the camp what the plan was, but Malcolm’s mind slots the pieces of the puzzle together in a way he doesn’t want to see, and he knows what’s coming.

He struggles and kicks out, but he’s slight and hungry and his head still swims from the bashing he took to it earlier. His struggles are sloppy and uncoordinated and it’s easy for the men to overpower him, shove him to the ground, and tie his legs up again. 

“Someone needs to remind this one who he is.” Malcolm thrashes and struggles, but it’s no use. These men know how to tie up bulls. He won’t be able to break loose. 

Heany smirks, a black, evil-looking glance that makes Malcolm shiver in a way that has nothing to do with the snow soaking through the legs of his pants and pressed against the back of his coat. The man unsheathes a long knife from his belt and straddles Malcolm’s waist, still smiling, eyes colder than the snow. 

Malcolm doesn’t dare move as the wicked-looking edge of the bowie knife slashes through his vest and the thin shirt below it. He feels like if he breathes, the blade will drive into his lungs or slash his throat. 

Heany rips the cloth away, then stands up, giving way to a big, grimy man in a buffalo coat and a battered grey hat. Who’s holding the glowing branding iron, that gives off faint hissing puffs and miniature clouds of steam as snowflakes hit it. 

The world feels like it slows to a crawl as he bends down and presses the metal to Malcolm’s chest. 

There’s a searing pain, and the smell of burned skin makes Malcolm sick. He’d never been able to watch a calf branding. The squeals of the frightened animals, the smell of scorched hair and charred flesh, the sickening sizzle of metal on skin...he’d never had the stomach for it. 

This time he does throw up, even though there isn’t anything more in his stomach than there was last time. He knows they’re laughing at him. He doesn’t care. 

“Don’t forget who you are, boy.” The laughter still echoes in his head. “Or next time, you’ll wish this was the worst you had.” 

Blood is thudding in Malcolm’s ears. He thinks he might pass out. What will happen if he does? What will they do to him then? It’s not like he can save himself though. He couldn’t stop this. He can’t stop them if they do anything worse. 

The thudding only gets louder. It sounds like hooves drumming against the ground, and it shakes in Malcolm’s bones. Or maybe he’s shaking. He can’t be sure. 

There’s shouts, and Malcolm feels himself pulled to his feet. His sweat and snow soaked hair is dragging in his eyes, but he can see horses emerging from the snow swirling in front of him. One of them is Gil’s buckskin paint. He’d know that medicine shield marking anywhere. 

Is he seeing things again? Maybe the shock and pain have snapped his mind for good now. 

But no, it looks like the Whitly gang has seen them too. All around him Malcolm can hear the sound of revolvers cocking. This is going to be a shootout if something doesn’t change fast. 

Malcolm blinks. That’s not Gil riding his own horse. That’s...someone with blond hair escaping a scarf.

_ Ainsley? _

A moment after he realizes that, he hears a choked off shout from somewhere beside him. And then sees Gil standing with his Colt to Deadwood Billy’s head.  _ He snuck around the camp and caught him by surprise.  _ Malcolm is continually impressed by Gil’s tracking and ambush skills. The man is a commanding presence in town, but he can become a walking shadow when he wants to be. “Let my deputy go now, and maybe you all live to stand a fair trial. Because no one here will care if I shoot your leader and then we pick off the rest of you like mangy coyotes.”

“Personally, I’ll take my chances over hanging,” Heany says from behind Malcolm, and Malcolm feels a new kind of icy touch on his throat as the Bowie knife blade rests across it. “You care too much about your little deputy to get him killed. So I think I’ll be walking away instead of dancing on the end of a rope.”

“I wouldn’t do that.” JT’s rifle is resting along his saddle, both of them his from his days as a Union soldier. The sharpshooter has deadly aim. 

“Let him go.” Dani’s voice is as icy as the wind. 

“I don’t think so, girlie,” Heany says, and then he screams at about the same time Malcolm hears the crack of a gunshot. JT doesn’t miss. 

The knife slices a shallow cut across the side of Malcolm’s neck as Heany falls, but that’s not what takes him to the ground. Without the man holding him up, the pain from the brand is too much, and he crumbles to the ground. 

His world goes white in pain, and he can hear gunshots and shouting overhead, but it’s all dull, muffled by the snow and the roaring in his ears. And then it all goes still, and he wonders if he’s dying, because someone in a white dress with a golden halo is hovering over him. Then he blinks and realizes it’s his sister, her coat covered in snow and her hair escaping its scarf. 

“Ainsley?” 

His sister pushes back the scarf wrapped all the way around her head.

“I saw them grab you behind the saloon, so I went for the sheriff.” Malcolm breathes a shaky sigh of relief. “I knew the way to the camp, and it took some time to convince him I wasn’t going to lead us all out here into an ambush, but he finally decided I could be trusted.” She inspects the wound on his neck and the brand on his chest with the precision of a surgeon, and barely moves aside an inch when Gil kneels beside her. There’s a bloody gash on his cheek, and he’s still panting slightly, but he’s alive and more or less unharmed.

“Dani? JT?” Malcolm manages to choke out. 

“They’re fine. Better than you anyway.” Gil shakes his head. “They’d be hovering too, but I told them to hitch the wagon back up so we can get you home and to the doctor.”

Malcolm wants to make some sort of joke about how it’s a good thing Edrisa will be filling her role as doctor and not wearing her town undertaker hat today, but a fresh surge of pain stops him from speaking. 

Gil shakes his head. “Next time you decide to go meet  _ any _ informant on your own, let me come along for backup, alright, son?”

Malcolm just nods. Too tired to think about all the meanings behind Gil’s final word.  _ If he’ll come rescue me, he can call me son anytime. Because that’s what family does. _


End file.
